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Sunday, March 13, 2016

“Trouble in paradise?”: MALIBU WANTS ITS OWN SCHOOL DISTRICT, BUT A SPLIT FROM SANTA MONICA MIGHT REQUIRE 'ALIMONY'

By Zahira Torres, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1P6QUaq

Mrach 11, 2016::The city of Malibu turns 25
years old this month, and leaders of the famous 21-mile stretch of coastline
have a birthday wish: their own school district.

Malibu has spent years trying to secede from the school
district it shares with Santa Monica, its relatively upscale — if not
Malibu-wealthy — neighbor to the south.

Now residents are closer than they've ever been to a
separation. They've gathered the required signatures to petition for the split
and persuaded the school district to appoint a committee that would negotiate a
breakup.

But as representatives for both cities met this week to
iron out logistics for such negotiations, it became clear that uncoupling the
Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District could prompt the kind of
high-priced, hyper-detailed legal wrangling that marks any stormy, high-profile
divorce.

The district's most recent projections show that Santa
Monica students would be the financial losers under such a separation. It would
receive about $9,500 per student, which is less than it would get if the
district remained whole.

Malibu, which has three elementary schools and a high
school, would get nearly $14,000 per student by 2017-18, district estimates
show.

School Board President Laurie Lieberman said that both
sides want to reach an agreement that would allow Malibu to split off, but that
it can't come at the expense of Santa Monica children.

"We exist to serve all of our students, and we can't
very well say, 'You want to be your own school district for your own reasons …
and we'll support that to the detriment of the remaining students,'"
Lieberman said.

Threats of educational secession have surfaced in cities
including Dallas and Memphis, but the proposed split in Southern California is
unusual because it features two wealthy beach communities in a high-performing
school district.

In this case, Malibu is the richer spouse with a median
income of more than $130,000 a year, nearly double the average household
earning power in Santa Monica.

Most students in Malibu are white and only about 11% are
poor.

Santa Monica schools are more diverse, and about 30% of
students come from economically disadvantaged families.

Santa Monica should not be confused with a poor town. The
wealth in both cities easily outpaces the county average, which shows
two-thirds of students are poor.

Rosenthal describes Malibu as a tight-knit rural
community that worries about transportation for students who live up to 20
miles from the nearest school and has environmental concerns about land use in
an area celebrated for its scenic vistas.

On the other hand, she said, Santa Monica is urban and
must focus on how to tailor its education system to serve larger campuses with
a greater concentration of children in poverty.

"The district is spending a lot of time and energy
having to deal with concerns in Malibu that should rightly be spent in Santa
Monica," Rosenthal said. "They have a lot of educational challenges
that we don't and vice versa."

Over the years, Malibu has compiled a long list of
grievances against the 11,000-student district.

Malibu residents complain that they lack representation
in a district where more than 80% of the students are from Santa Monica.

They still bristle at the fact that the district and the
county rejected their attempt to convert Point Dume elementary school into a
charter.

Many argue that the district has not done enough to
remove polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that were found in some Malibu
schools.

And parents were roiled years ago after the district
prohibited PTA groups from raising funds to hire staff, including teacher's
aides, at individual schools.

Before the policy passed, some schools, particularly in
Malibu, were raising up to $2,000 per student, while others were bringing in
less than $100 per child.

Lori Whitesell, a parent of two children at Santa Monica
High School, defends the decision to require most money raised by parents to go
into a districtwide pot that is then distributed more equally among all
schools.

"Every child's experience, no matter what school
they go to, should be comparable. It shouldn't matter whether your child goes
to school in Malibu or Santa Monica," Whitesell said.

Negotiating a split won't be easy.

A committee that includes the mayor of Malibu, two
lawyers and members of the district's financial oversight committee must figure
out how to keep Santa Monica students from being woefully shortchanged by the
deal, how to allocate bond debt and how to relieve Santa Monica from a lawsuit
alleging that the district has not properly removed contaminants from some
Malibu schools.

An agreement between Malibu and Santa Monica could help
in the years-long process to become independent but provides no guarantee.

Such a split requires approval from the county and state
education departments and must go to voters for a final blessing.

Some California districts have successfully split but
many have failed.

In the early 1990s, for example, voters in three South
Bay cities — Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach — approved an
effort to reorganize.

The city of Carson, on the other hand, jumped through
various procedural hoops in its effort to separate from the Los Angeles Unified
School District only to have its plan rejected by voters in 2001.

Malibu residents say they will continue to push forward.
They have even suggested working out an agreement in which Malibu would pay
millions of dollars in losses that the breakup could cost Santa Monica.

"One of the school board members literally shouted
out in a meeting, 'We want alimony,'" said Craig Foster, the sole Malibu
resident on the school board. "So, we're trying to get them some alimony
so we can start our new life afresh."